Lying east of the influence of the Gulf Stream, the range of temperature is of the widest. Often the island is unapproachable owing to the ice, sometimes it is even now as hot as Welden found it in 1608, when, in June, "the pitch did run down the ship's sides, and that side of the masts that was to the sun-ward was so hot that the tar did fry out of it as though it had boiled." That was a great year for Welden, for he killed a thousand walruses in less than seven hours and took a young one home with him, "where the king and many honourable personages beheld it with admiration, the like whereof had never before been seen alive in England." Poole did much useful work in these seas, but is now little heard of, most of the surviving interest in such matters being concentrated on Henry Hudson, who was in the same service at the same time. Hudson was, perhaps, a grandson of Alderman Henry Hudson, one of the founders of the Muscovy Company, but nothing is really known of him beyond his being a captain in the Muscovy Company, who, on the 19th of April, 1607, took the sacrament at St. Ethelburga's, in Bishopsgate Street, with his son and crew "and the rest of the parishioners." That he was a parishioner may be true, but that all the ten members of the crew were so is unlikely. Anyhow, they were outward bound for Japan and China by way of the North Pole, and sailed from Gravesend on the 1st of May. Where he went is not clear in detail, as his latitudes are seldom correct and his longitudes are not recorded. He sighted Greenland north of Iceland, and, shouldered off by the ice barrier, left it somewhere about Franz Josef Fjord, working easterly by the edge of the ice to Spitsbergen. Here he sailed round Prince Charles's Foreland and went north, passing Hakluyt Headland, which he named, reaching on the 13th of July, 80° 23´, "by observation." He saw many whales, but found his way blocked by ice; and after many attempts, assuring himself that there was no passage hereabouts to the north, sailed southwards for Bear Island. On leaving this he seems to have gone west, possibly to the coast of Greenland again, for on his way home he lighted upon Hudson's Touches, now known as Jan Mayen Island, the principal cape of which bears the name of Hudson's Point—which may be either Hudson's or Rudston's (after the Rudston mentioned in Baffin's fourth voyage)—while another is known as Young's Foreland, perhaps after the James Young who was the first in the ship to sight the coast of Greenland on the outward journey. He dropped anchor in the Thames on the 15th of September all well. He had not crossed the Pole, nor did he find Spitsbergen stretching up to 82°, as he said, its most northerly point being miles further south; but he had gone beyond Van Heemskerck's furthest north and found a fishing ground for whales and walruses which proved of great commercial value. [Illustration: FRANZ JOSEF FIORD]